The Field Museum
Fieldmuseum.org is a website that gives information about not only the actual Field Museum itself in Chicago, Illinois, but it also has teacher resources that educators can use. By clicking on the Schools and Education tab, teachers can go explore what the Field Museum has available as resources.
This website includes a few resources for teachers, including lesson plans, programs, and even a way to bring the museum to you (http://harris.fieldmuseum.org/index/default.php).
Pros:
The website has so really cool lesson plans for grades 3-8. Depending on the lesson that you choose to use, there are standards for Mathematics, Science, History, Language Arts, or Fine Arts, or all of these content areas.
Cons:
- Most of the lessons go hand-in-hand with a field trip to the Field Museum. Unless you live in Illinois or they have some kind of online way to view the exhibits in the museum, you can’t go to the Field Museum and use these lessons before, or after, being there.
- The standards on these lesson plans are all for Illinois. Teachers will have to change these standards to fit the Ohio standards.
- Not all of the lesson plans have assessments included in them. In that case, it won’t be that difficult to come up with assessments that go along with the lesson plans.
- The website does not have as many resources as I would like. More of the resources are at the museum instead of on the website.
Standard examples:
RI.3.1 – Ask and answer questions to demonstrate understanding of a text, referring explicitly to the text as the basis for the answers
RI.3.2 – Determine the main idea of a text; recount the key details and explain how they support the main idea
RI.3.3 – Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect
Resources:
Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2012.) English Language Arts Standards >> Home >> English Language Arts Standards. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy
The Field Museum. (2014). The Field Museum. Retrieved from http://fieldmuseum.org/